The whole clown car of Republican candidates will be in next Thursday’s debate. Fuck yeah.
I’ll be in DC next week for work. I was thinking of doing a meet up that Thursday to watch the debates if people are up for it. I’ll be in the northwest, near the zoo.
rk
It’ll be like the tower of babble.
Culture of Truth
Watch out for the primates flinging poo!
Also, if you go to the zoo.
Jeffro
Man, that is one long night of drinking games…
rikyrah
I actually will be watching it.
MazeDancer
It’s still two debates. Bottom 6 start at 5 for an hour. The “real debate” is still only the top 10 as determined by Fox in methods the will not disclose.
Fox is calling it a change. But Fox is still determining the GOP field. Fox is not letting all 16 in the actual debate.
jl
@MazeDancer: We will know that whatever Fox News does, it will be fair and balanced.
But seriously, is it true they aren’t specifying how they will rank the candidates? Really? I guess with their audience, FN doesn’t have to, their dupes swallow anything.
Groucho48
I wonder what the format will be? Q and A would seem unworkable. Show of hands? Each candidate gets to make a short speech? Tag team wrestling? Target shooting Obama and Clinton targets? Who could make the most Nazi references in their time segment?
I also wonder how many will agree beforehand to gang up on Trump.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@jl: I thought they said they were going to use the top ten in five polls, but they didn’t’ specify which five. Has that changed?
beltane
I’ll have to stock up on liquor for this one. Maybe some tequila in honor of Donald Trump.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Groucho48:
All of them, Katie.
dogwood
@Groucho48:
Whatever format they choose, it’ll be claaaaasy.
SarahT
@dogwood: Putting the “assy” in “classy”:
https://mobile.twitter.com/WordsofDissent/status/626144561731997696/photo/1
Well done, Philly !
Culture of Truth
Darn right I’m watching!
But supplementing on the alcohol
danielx
Goddamn, Reince Priebus must be gulping down Maalox, Tums, Xanax and Stolichnaya like nobody’s business. The whole ugly id of the Republican Party on exceedingly public display; it’s enough to drive a man to drink and drugs.
And that’s just the audience.
danielx
@Groucho48:
I’m thinking a pit of rabid wolverines comes into this somewhere.
mai naem mobile
If.they want to get rid of Trump they just need to.have one of those powerful fans they have for supermodel magazine shoots which make their hair look like its blowing out. It would also get rid of the other guy the Kochs.don’t like, Rand Paul.
Omnes Omnibus
@danielx: Sounds cruel to the wolverines.
catclub
Turkey continues to be hugely classy – bombing both ISIL and Kurds – including Kurds in Iraq.
mai naem mobile
@dogwood: it’s also going to get yooooooge ratings.
Belafon
@MazeDancer: The winner of the first debate should move up to the finals.
MazeDancer
@jl:
That’s right, Fox will not say how they are using polls to determine top 10. Will not say which polls or what date or anything.
Rachel Maddow has been all over this for weeks blasting Fox. Because national polls are meaningless this far in advance. Rick Santorum went on her show. He agrees with her that no TV network should control who runs for office.
Fox could have two debates of 8 candidates, no ranking. But they want to control who runs.
Tree With Water
If Ailes had it together, he’d give each candidate their own reality show.
The more, the merrier. Let their idiot winds blow, and may the republican party be blown away on the escaping gas- may it be gone with their wind!
jl
@MazeDancer: It will be interesting to see how ultra old their audience is in a year or two, The ones still of sound mind must be tuning out.
jl
@Tree With Water:
” he’d give each candidate their own reality show. ”
Probably makes more money featuring a just a favored few on the reality show he runs now.
Edit: but I did predict a few days ago, GOP reality shows will be the thing next cycle. I guess produced by each billionaire for the ones not in the Fox News stable.
scav
Bit of a “The solution to pollution is dilution” approach? Spread the crazy around (and for longer) and hope there are enough examples that no single source grabs all the attention? Or, maybe it’s more of providing an overabundence of targets in the hope that the predators get confused and only grab the really weak individuals. (Early debate as chum, only they hope the sharks over-indulge on the appetisers and can’t manage the main course). Also, there should be all sorts of ways to jack up the time needed for debate infrastructure, introductions, handoffs to reduce the actual airtime the candidates are meat-tossing. Who knows, maybe all they see is visual clickbait-equivalent they only have to turn on the camera for.
gene108
I’m voting for the person with biggest flag pin on his/her lapel.
And I hope if anyone forgets to wear a flag pin his/her feet are held to the fire for a sheer lack of patriotism.
JPL
So everyone is going to watch a debate when every question has to do with Obama. Really?
My goodness, I’d drink to questions about health care plans or even Iran plans but that will not be the debate.
JPL
Knowing Fox they will bring a doll and ask the candidates to show where Obama hurt them.
mdblanche
@JPL: Well it does make sense since they’re competing for the chance to face off head to head directly against Obama come the general election.
Wait, what’s that you say?
Never mind.
burnspbesq
@danielx:
Give the people what they want.
chopper
looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
burnspbesq
@jl:
Which two are those?
JPL
@mdblanche: It’s Fox.
debbie
Here’s a highly annoying (not to mention dishonest) video ad for theGOP:
http://opportunitylives.com/featuredvideos/EveryFamily
It’s put out by Opportunity Lives, which is part of Opportunity News Media. Their Web site states, “Opportunity Lives is a news organization dedicated to discovering and highlighting real life success stories and solutions across America.”
This ain’t news.
http://opportunitylives.com/
Groucho48
@gene108:
The question is…will it be an American flag, a Confederate flag or an Israeli flag?
John Revolta
Debates, hell. We’ve got months and months. Let’s put ’em all on an island….
Karen in GA
Photography class Thursday nights. Dammit. I’ll be checking here constantly.
Bubblegum Tate
@Groucho48:
Multiple choice
Omnes Omnibus
@John Revolta: And shell it?
divF
Off by a bit again, dammit. I’ll be near Farragut Square next week, but only on Tuesday night.
On the other hand, anyone watching the debates will be as close to the zoo as you’d want to get.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@jl: As their children ask their board and care providers to change the channel, like we had to do with my husband’s mother. She was just so agitated during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq it was unhealthy for her, and she had a shaky grasp on reality so it just made her worse. She thought her husband had gone off to fight in Iraq; he had died the year before.
Ruckus
I’d have to go back to drinking and heavily to even think of watching. And I’m not doing that.
My time isn’t worth a bag of spit but it’s worth far more than subjecting myself to that.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@catclub: The BBC had a segment on the Turkey campaign this morning. There was also an interview with Jordan Matson – an ex Marine who has been fighting with the Kurds. He made the case that Turkey is getting involved in Syria now (after sitting on the sidelines for 4 years) because the Kurds there are close to taking the last city on the border that would give them a contiguous Kurdish enclave. The Turkish government doesn’t care about IS anywhere near as much as they want to destroy the PKK and their Kurdish supporters.
There’s a certain logic to the view that IS is a sideshow in that battle…
I can’t find a linky to it on the BBC web site, for some reason. This earlier PRI story about him covered similar topics.
I hope Kerry and Obama tread very carefully in helping Erdogan in this new expansion of military actions in Syria/Iraq/etc… :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: I intend to track it through the filter of this site.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
We could set up a fund raiser so the navy isn’t on the hook for a dime. Could probably raise enough to pay the navy and get a pretty nice vacation out of it. Skiing in the Alps, whatever.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hell that’s OK, the snark will be better than drinking. Well at least for me.
Redshift
There’s not enough alcohol in the world…
divF
@efgoldman: Will do.
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s what I did through the entire 2012 cycle, and will do so this cycle too.
Gian
@Omnes Omnibus:
it’s an el nino year, some island destined for a category 5 cyclone
Omnes Omnibus
@Gian: I was trained as an artilleryman. Shelling things works (if your goal is to fuck something up). I know that, if I put enough rounds on it, it is obliterated. I don’t have that level of confidence in the precision of the weather.*
*I note that I am putting a lot more trust in the precision of naval gunnery than I usually do.
Edited slightly.
Gian
@efgoldman:
as far as I could tell the Turks were doing the enemy of my enemy bit not that long ago with ISIL/ISIS versus the Kurds. this is a big switch. the whole “emergency NATO meeting” thing is interesting as they could easily have helped defend the siege of Khobani (if I spelled that right) – they even had troops massed at the border. In hindsight, I guess they were to keep refugees out.
I’ll readily apologize if my read was incorrect.
Gian
@Omnes Omnibus:
when it comes to making sure the bunkers are cleaned out one needs to send in the poor bloody infantry.
“. It was at Verdun that the saying “artillery conquers, infantry occupies” was coined. And it was right: a hard lesson learned by all sides”
http://www.1914-1918.net/bat15C.htm
Mandalay
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
If the Kurds attack Turkish forces from Syrian or Iraqi soil then perhaps Erdogan could summon NATO to help, since an attack on a member of NATO is an attack on all members of NATO:
Kerry would then have the unenviable task of explaining why NATO was attacking our Kurdish allies.
What a clusterfuck.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gian: Sure, of course. Why do you think I chose to be a gunner?
John Revolta
@Omnes Omnibus: This would be a fabulous final episode, just as the last survivors (Trump and Christie) were staring each other down.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Revolta: Oh, I like you. I really like you.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Gian: FT:
Ergodan isn’t happy about the recent election results, nor about the recent IS attack inside Turkey. He seems to think that expanding the war is the way to increase his political power and prospects. People thinking that way usually don’t behave in their country’s (or the world’s) best interests… This could be very dangerous for NATO and the US – we need to watch him carefully and not get dragged into actions that are against our interests.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@efgoldman: W’s administration caused her shaky grasp on reality. Poor old lady, her caretakers adored her but I’m guessing that the husband of the owner is probably now a Tea Partier; the wife was sweet and not political as far as we could tell.
They had two beautiful adult daughters, one who was terribly naive and ill-informed and who married a man who turned out to have some connection to weapons smuggling. She admitted to us when the drama had died down that she had never known what he did for a living, he didn’t even bother with a cover story.
The other one took over the board and care when her parents retired, just before my MIL died, and she was very level-headed. She was the one who got the channel changed permanently to something else, usually Animal Planet, back when it was all cute animals and sweet stories.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Gian: And a cyclone in the Pacific is what we call a hurricane in the Atlantic, right?
Wag
@Tree With Water:
It’ll all be idiot winds, blowing like a circle around my skull from the Grand Coulée Dam to the Capital
askew
Hey at least they have scheduled debates. Debbie still working on our schedule, once she oks it with the Hillary campaign.
Gian
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne):
is tropical storm better? typhoon is used too. as el nino cuts down on the Atlantic hurricane season, I was going pacific,
(it also has a climate change angle which in the hypothetical I was aiming for)
Omnes Omnibus
@Gian: See, this is why I recommend shelling.
Mandalay
@askew:
Debbie will formally delegate that to Clinton. She is too busy deciding whether her loyalty lies with President Obama or Israel. Or more likely she is stalling, waiting to see which way the wind blows.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Gian: I think cyclone is the term you wanted, if you are referring to an el nino event in the Pacific. Not sure of the difference between that and a typhoon.
Isn’t el niño a Pacific thing?
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Mandalay: I must have missed something wrt Debbie, but I miss a lot of stuff.
MattF
On the Red Line… Easy for me.
Omnes Omnibus
@askew: It is too fucking early for debates on the Dem side. Let the GOP air their idiocy.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): I think “Debbie” = DWS here.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@MazeDancer:
Yes, because this usurps the Koch Brothers.
Fox, Adelson, Koch Brothers, the GOP version of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
MattF
Maybe the idea is that an unwieldy format will keep Trump from dominating. Everyone gets five minutes, and then the guy with the hook comes out.
Gian
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne):
What is an El Niño?
El Niño is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, as opposed to La Niña, which characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific. El Niño is an oscillation of the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific having important consequences for weather around the globe
El Niño conditions
Among these consequences are increased rainfall across the southern tier of the US and in Peru, which has caused destructive flooding, and drought in the West Pacific, sometimes associated with devastating brush fires in Australia. Observations of conditions in the tropical Pacific are considered essential for the prediction of short term
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/el-nino-story.html
I’ve been hoping for an end to the cali drought, but an el nino year has effects far beyond California
Across the contiguous United States, temperature and precipitation impacts associated with El Niño are expected to remain minimal during the Northern Hemisphere summer and increase into the late fall and winter (the 3-month seasonal outlook will be updated on Thursday July 16th). El Niño will likely contribute to a below normal Atlantic hurricane season, and to above-normal hurricane seasons in both the central and eastern Pacific hurricane basins (click Hurricane season outlook for more).
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html
Gian
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m thinking small island, with a storm surge higher than the elevation
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
This can be greatly exaggerated, though. My grandfather had a story about a demonstration of a multi-battery fire on a small pocket of woods. The commentator who was describing the demonstration for the people watching said something about how nothing could survive such hellish violence, only for a small herd of deer to come trotting out of the woods, apparently upset but unharmed. So “enough” rounds may obliterate something, but it may be an arbitrarily large number depending on the target.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gian: I understand that, but you can’t guarantee results. Gunnery can. It’s like “Nuke it for orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” Yours is a more elegant solution, but mine works.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Enough rounds weren’t used.
askew
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nope. We already had 2 debates in 2008 by this time. The only reason we are only having 6 debates period is because Debbie is trying to help Hillary’s campaign.
Omnes Omnibus
@askew: It isn’t 2008. Obama vs. Clinton was a real thing. Wake me when Sanders is in striking distance.
Gian
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m reminded of something my dad says about air power. during the war, and the strategic bombing, german industrial production in WWII increased.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gian: Air enthusiasts decided that they could take over for artillery. They were wrong. Gunners know that the grunts need to go in and that the guns need to keep on in support of the grunts.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Gian: That’s about what I thought the definitions of both of those phenomena were.
I’m curious about what it means for low temps this winter, if the drought does break. I’m hoping for snow in the Sierras and lots of it, as well as some here in the PNW. The lakes around Mt Rainier are slimy ponds, less than a quarter the size they should be, not to mention all of the smaller creeks that have dried up because there was not enough snow.
January of 2012 is the last big snow we had in the Seattle area, with over a foot of snow at my house. We knew it was coming and swung by the grocery store to stock up on fresh vegetables and fruit; we were snowed in for a week, which was fine and lots of fun, until the 7th day when we realized we were running out of toilet paper. Some workaholic had blazed a trail for us into town because the roads were not plowed, so we crept along at 5 mph and got down off the hill, and discovered that the snowplows were all busy in Seattle and had not plowed in our town either.
A shot of our front yard and the birch trees in the snow:
https://flic.kr/p/bdsseg
Another Holocene Human
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): Remember when the news propagandists thought it was their duty to the masses to calm public fears? Actually, I don’t remember because it was before my time but back in the 20s and 30s there was an open debate about this.
Fear sells. These people are destroying people and families and they don’t give a f*ck.
Mathguy
@DougJ Going to Mathfest? I’m herding some students out to that.
John Dillinger
I’m up for it. Cleveland Park has a few more bars than it used to, but the question is whether the TV will be audible. I have that question into this one: http://www.cpbargrill.com/
We talking getting together early for the JV game too?
John Dillinger
There’s also this, about 6 stops down the Red Line by Union Station:
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/predictit-republican-primary-debate-watch-party-tickets-17853242529